Problem playing 4k content on fire tv

[Fairswing]

Hi guys,

I'm having some issues playing 4K content on my FHD fire tv.

When I start playing the content using the default player, expecting a transcode from my server, nothing happens and even if my server starts transcoding for about 10 minutes on the tv I don't see anything.

I tried even using VLC as an external player but even with it I cannot see anything and the content starts but with a black screen with only audio.

I tried lowering the bitrate to 5Mb to see if something changed but, even there, nothing.

I really cannot wrap my mind around this because if I try to play content on other FHD devices (not fire tv but Android phones) it works perfectly fine transcoding accordingly to the device.

All the files I've tried are h.265 4k.

Some advice?

[Fairswing]

With a bit of testing I can add that it only happens with hardware transcoding, I don't know if it's useful but when I use only software transcoding the video plays, it's unwatchable because of the crappy frame rate but it plays both audio and video

[theguymadmax]

The issue you're experiencing seems to be a known problem with Fire TV, where media encoded in both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ fails to play, and this typically happens only with direct playback. However, the way you are using the terminology may be a little off.

If no transcoding is happening, the media is being played directly. Hardware or software transcoding occurs when direct playback isn’t possible. Hardware acceleration is used when you have a compatible GPU and enable it in the playback → transcoding menu in the dashboard. If you don't have hardware acceleration set up, then transcoding will be done via your CPU (software transcoding).


AndroidTV
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and...ssues/2630 (old issue)
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and...ssues/4021 (new issue)

Exoplayer/AndroidX Media
https://github.com/google/exoplayer/issues/11096 (old issue)
https://github.com/androidx/media/issues/1895 (new issue)

Workarounds:

1. Remove DV Metadata: Follow the steps in this forum thread to strip out the Dolby Vision metadata.
   
   Code:

   /usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffmpeg -y -hide_banner -stats -fflags +genpts+igndts -loglevel error -i "/path/to/dvhdr10+_video.mkv" -map 0 -bsf:v hevc_metadata=remove_dovi=1 -codec copy -max_muxing_queue_size 2048 -max_interleave_delta 0 -avoid_negative_ts disabled hdr10_video.mkv
2. Remove HDR10+ Metadata:
   
   Code:

   /usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffmpeg -y -hide_banner -stats -fflags +genpts+igndts -loglevel error -i "/path/to/dvhdr10+_video.mkv" -map 0 -bsf:v hevc_metadata=remove_hdr10plus=1 -codec copy -max_muxing_queue_size 2048 -max_interleave_delta 0 -avoid_negative_ts disabled dv_video.mkv
3. Force Transcoding on ATV: Reduce the bitrate or set audio to stereo to trigger transcoding on the client.
   
4. Use Kodi as an external player for the ATV client: Kodi allows you to choose the format compatible with your TV. You can disable Dolby Vision or HDR10+ as needed.
   
5. Use Kodi with Jellyfin Plugin: Kodi allows you to choose the format compatible with your TV. You can disable Dolby Vision or HDR10+ as needed.
   

[Fairswing]

The problem seems to be resolved lowering the bitrate of the client to 5Mb/s even if this lower of a bitrate makes the video a bit “laggy”.
I also tried using Kodi but I can’t find the jellyfin plugin in the add-on repository

[theguymadmax]

Kodi add-on if you want to try that: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/kodi/